Week 3, Thursday: We left for Sao Paulo bright and early Thursday morning. We had several stops on the way and it is a good thing. Apparently Sao Paulo had a huge rainstorm Wednesday night and all low spots in the city were under water. Many roads were closed including the road to our hotel. We first stopped at Coplacana which is a large sugar cane cooperative. Obviously nothing the students had seen before. It was interesting to see how sugar cane is produced and processed and its impact on bio energy. The cooperative had a hospital, supply store, car repair shop, equipment repair shop, bank, feed mill etc. for its members. It also had a bio-diesel plant and we were able to see it in action. Brazil is very big on recycling and it is obvious everywhere we go including Coplacana . We enjoyed a great lunch in Campinas and then went to the Instituto Agronomico. This program is similar to OARDC in that research is the focus and in this case on crops, soils and soil fertility. The buildings were old and neat to observe. One of the buildings was being renovated. There also was an arboretum with several species of plants. We went to the soils lab and also toured the farm where we saw coffee plants and the actual bean, edible beans, rubber being collected from the rubber tree, corn and cotton. We learned that edible beans (their staple crop)are very difficult to harvest mechanically because of the way they are grown. We had supper at the local mall and most of us had either Burger King or Subway. Some good old American food in Brazil. We browsed at the mall for a while and headed back to the hotel for an early night.